Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Beyond Rejection 250nipples felt as big as grapes. I went out as I worked my way down p the belly button.The next day I discovered that I had not only lost a penis. I ha gained a meter-longprehensile tail. It was hate at first sense.I had worked my way up to consciousness in slow stages. I ha endless flightdreams-walking, running, staggering on, away from sour nameless horror. And briefflashes of sexuality that featured performances by my (former) body.I really liked my old body. One of my biggest problems, as Dr. Germaine Meanswas soon to tell me. I could picture clearly how it had looked in the mirrors as I did mystretch and tone work. Just a hair over six foot four. Two hundred and five pounds, welldefinedmuscles, and` just enough fat to be comfortable. A mat of curly red chest hair thatmade it easy to decide to have my facial hair wiped permanently. It felt good to be aconfident and even slightly clumsy giant, looking down on a world of little people.Oh, I wasn't a real body builder or anything like that. Just enough exercise to lookgood-and attractive. I hadn't in fact been all that good at physical sports. But I had likedmy body. It was also a help in the public'' relations work that I did for IBO.I was still lying on my back. I felt shrunk. Shrunk. As the warm, muza flush ofsleep faded, my right hand moved up over my ribs. Ribs. Th were thin and they stuck out,as if the skin were sprayed over the ba cage. I felt like a skeleton until I got to the lumps.Bags. Growths. Sacks. Even then part of me realized that they were not at all large for awoma, while most of me felt that they were as big as cantaloupes.You may have imagined it as a kind of erotic dream. There you a in the hospitalbed. You reach and there they are. Apt to the hands, t hardening nipples nestled betweenindex and middle fingers. (Doubtless some men have felt this warm reverie with theirhands on real flesh. women may have felt pinch and itch rather than the imagined sensuflush. I know whereof I speak. I now know a lot of sexuality is like tha Perhapsheterosexuality continues as well as it does because of ignorance each partner is free toinvent the feelings of the other.)But I was quite unable to feel erotic about my new acquisitions. Bot ways. Myfingers, as I felt them, felt pathology. Two dead cancerou mounds. And from the insidesoto speak-I felt that my flesh ha swollen. The sheet made the nipples feel raw. A strangefeeding of separation, as if the breast were disconnected, nerveless jelly-and then twopoints of sensitivity some inches in front of my chest. Dead spots. Rejec tion. I learned alot about these.